Landing football’s Holy Grail seems light years away for proud Englishmen this morning, but every dog has its day.

Four months before Bobby Moore collected the Jules Rimet trophy at Wembley, David Corbett became the first Englishman to lift the World Cup by taking his dog Pickles for a walk.

Corbett, a Thames lighterman, was only nipping to the phone box across the road from his flat in Norwood, south London, one Sunday evening in March 1966, when his four-year-old cross-bred collie went sniffing at a package under a neighbour’s car.

Corbett opened the parcel and recognised the winged Greek goddess figure which had been stolen from a stamps exhibition at the Westminster Methodist Hall a week earlier.

Now 74, Corbett was staggered when he handed in the Crown Jules at Gypsy Hill police station and the duty coppers treated his discovery with scorn.

Finally, when the Flying Squad took over, Corbett was still in his slippers as they hauled him off to Scotland Yard and held him until 2.30am as a suspect.

The Yard had botched a ransom handover 48 hours earlier after small-time thief Edward Betchley demanded £15,000 from FA chairman Joe Mears for the trophy’s return. “I had to go to work next morning,” said Corbett. “I would have got a better night’s sleep if I’d just chucked the package Pickles found back in the gutter.

“But he didn’t need to win Britain’s Got Talent to become a national celebrity. There was a general election coming up, but Pickles knocked Harold Wilson off the front pages.”

One of Corbett’s rewards, three months before England were due to host the World Cup, was to join the team’s celebrations at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington after the final.

“I turned up with Pickles under my arm and he was allowed to lick my dinner plate clean. Bobby Charlton’s wife made a big fuss over him, but the WAGs were not happy.

“The players were upstairs, waving from the balcony, drinking champagne, while their wives were in a room downstairs with only a buffet.

“Cor, were they upset! They were all dressed up, believing they were going to celebrate winning the World Cup with their husbands, but all they got for their glad rags was a buffet. I bet the rolling pin was out later that night.”

Corbett, appearing at the Facilities Show at London’s ExCeL this week for gritting and snow clearance supplier De-Ice, may have found himself as owner of the world’s most famous dog, but Pickles’ celebrity was brief.

Chasing a cat, he was throttled by his own lead a year later when it became tangled on a branch. Pickles was buried outside the house in Lingfield, Surrey, where Corbett still lives.

Mears died 10 days before the 1966 tournament began after an attack of angina, brought on by the stress.

And Betchley died in 1969 after serving a two-year stretch for demanding money with menaces.

The original Jules Rimet trophy, Brazil’s to keep after winning it three times, was stolen again in 1983 and never found.

But FA secretary Denis Follows secretly commissioned a replica trophy to spare England the embarrassment of hosting a World Cup without a pot.

“Watch film of England’s lap of honour in 1966 and you’ll see they are followed around Wembley by a plain-clothes copper whose job was to keep tabs on the trophy,” said Corbett.

“So, the Queen hands it to Bobby Moore, the England players show it off and in the dressing room afterwards the real thing is exchanged for the replica. They were determined not to lose it a second time.”